This article or section should be merged with mosh.

A mosh pit is a crowd of people, typically just in front of the stage, who mosh to loud and heavy and fast music.

In 2000, Michael Moore's The Awful Truth television show took a portable mosh pit across the country and challenged presidential candidates to dive in. The premise was that the show would endorse any Presidential hopeful crazy enough to do it. At one debate the mosh pit was called "the defining moment of the 2000 election."

At a town hall event being staged by Ronald Reagan's former ambassador to the United Nations Social and Economic Council, Alan Keyes, aides went outside to see what all the commotion was about. When informed that Keyes could get the endorsement of "The Awful Truth with Michael Moore," Keyes' national field director dove into the pit, hoping that would suffice for the endorsement. He then brought out "Uncle Sam," a Keyes supporter who also jumped in.

Alan Keyes, after being convinced for several minutes by his daughter to dive in also, did exactly that. He dove backwards into the screaming crowd of youths to the sound of Rage Against the Machine and surfed the crowd. After a couple of body slams with a spiked-hair youth from Ames high school, he left the pit with the official endorsement of the show.

Michael Moore said of the incident: "We knew Alan Keyes was insane. We just didn't know how insane until that moment."

Mosh pits were invented in 1981 at Punk rock concerts. It later moved to the heavy metal scene, where head banging and crowd surfing were incorporated. By the time of the disastrous Woodstock 1999, mosh pits have degenerated into a full-scale riot. Crowd control involves having concert rules, picking out problem-causing audience members, and a T-barricade that separates the pit from the band and into two groups.